


burns like ice

by quietlyposts



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: 40s!Violet, 90s!Adore, Ghost!AU, M/M, adore is called danny, and she hates interior decorating, violet is apathetic and dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5270156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyposts/pseuds/quietlyposts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>next time you death drop, reverse that and drop dead.<br/> a Violet-centric ghost!au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burns like ice

**Author's Note:**

> a Violet-centric ghost!au. 90s!Adore(Danny) and 40s!Violet. (Violet is called Violet and has female pronouns, Danny has male and is called Danny bc in this au he’s just starting drag, and never gets to be Adore.)  
> Violet has been a bored, apathetic ghost for 50 years when her attention is suddenly caught by a fascinating new occupant catches her attention.
> 
> [warning for character death. mentions murder and a depicted accidental death.]
> 
> i picked violet and adore for this bc i think they’re a cute ship, but mostly because they both have very decade relevant aesthetics.]

Death is a terrible, terrible thing. 

For starters, it’s the most boring thing Violet has ever experienced, and she went to Catholic school. She had grown up, as a queer teenager, fully expecting all the burning flames and huge demons and endless torture of hell. Instead, she’s stuck in a house she’s always hated and it’s colder than ice. She feels like she is frozen in place as everything moves around her, and as hard as she tries she can’t make contact with anything or anyone. She can no longer hear her heels clicking on the floor, and her makeup is forever frozen in the same colors; she unfortunately can see herself in mirrors, and she’s endlessly irritated by that small detail. Time passes endlessly, yet she stays exactly as she was on that last day, helpless and alone. 

After a while, Violet finds that she can almost sleep, if she tries. When she doesn’t concentrate on anything but the feeling of cold, the only feeling she has anymore, everything seems to fade away, and time seems to fly past her. She even manages to be completely unaware of most what she thinks was the 60s or 70s, when the family living in her home chose a color palette consisting of only mustard yellow, pus yellow, and brown. She finds herself captivated by a few moments of time; different inventions and advancements catching her attention, but the more that time moves on, the colder and more desperately lonely she feels. 

So Violet returns to the basement, where she died, where she finds it easiest to escape the passage of time, and embraces the cold. 

———————————

Violet is jolted into awareness by the sound of a loud, melodic voice. 

She focuses in on the unfamiliar voice, trying to determine why it woke her, and Violet realizes it’s the not voice that grabbed her attention. Instead, it’s the smell of hairspray and cigarettes, causing her to blink rapidly as she adjusts to suddenly feeling the freeze once more. She manages a few shaky steps and realizes that her basement is now a bedroom. And source of the voice is a young girl leaning in close to a vanity mirror and smoking. She has messy blonde hair, thick and tangled, and dark at the roots, and that’s really all Violet cares to see of her. 

Uninterested, Violet turns away from her to look around the room and is almost surprised that she hadn’t noticed this changing around her. Her eyes adjust to her surroundings, from the walls covered in strange posters; lots of dirty looking blondes with one seemingly irrelevant word slapped across them; several of a large bosomed dark haired woman; large grinning skulls; a bar of soap. She raises a perfectly painted eyebrow and goes to turn away, but one poster catches her eye before she can turn away. 

It’s several images of the same woman in three different poses, her hair in avant garde ringlets. The poster proclaims her to be ‘Supermodel of the World’, and Violet’s non beating heart clenches in her chest. She isn’t sure why, or what is, but she’s suddenly acutely aware of the achingly familiar smell of cigarettes and hairspray once more, and her hands shake. She starts to whirl around so she can look at the girl on the other side of the room, and finds herself instead standing directly next to her. Her vision spins, the cold feeling intensifying to a near burn, and… Violet can’t remember ever having done that before. Not even when she saw the policeman roll over her limp body with the toe of his muddy shoe, or when the little cretins who moved in tore down her beautiful wallpaper and replaced it with tacky plastic wood.

She hovers there at the girl’s shoulder, watching the way she stares at herself in the mirror with confidence, grinning and singing. Violet remembers staring at her own reflection the exact same way, and when the girl starts swiping a vivid red over her lips, Violet stumbles forward and collides with her shoulder. Or rather, she merges with her shoulder, Violet’s body just dissipating from the contact like fog. The girl shivers, but her eyes just glance up toward the air vent in the corner of the room, and she reaches down and unties a men’s button up from around her waist, slipping her arms into it. Violet sighs, backing up a bit and admiring the way the girl overdraws her lips, the bright shade so similar to Violet’s own. The cold envelops Violet suddenly, violently, as if angered that Violet forgot about it. She stumbles away from the girl and sinks to the ground, and the moment her hand touches the floor ice shoots it’s way up her arm, and the blonde fades from her vision. 

——————

The next time she regains awareness of the room, it’s dark, and she hears sniffling coming from directly behind her. She turns and stares down at a bed, with a shaking bundle curled up at the top of it. Violet takes a few steps toward the bed, and her eyes flutter around the room. She’s surprised to see that it looks the same; a few posters may have been added, she thinks. The walls look messier. 

She tries to focus in on the chill, feeling distantly uncomfortable, the shadow of a real emotion, but the sound of soft sobs distract her from concentrating on it. Violet purses her lips with annoyance and floats toward the bed. She knows she can’t logically help the girl, yet she watches her legs mist into the bed as she crouches down to peer at the girl in the dark. The hair peaking out of the top is shorter and darker than she saw before, and she uselessly sets a hand on it. She watches it fade out of existence around the messy strands, smoking and curling around the strands, and pets over it like she remembers mothers doing to their children. After a bit, the crying stops, and she can not only hear, but feel the girl’s breathing return to normal. She absent-mindedly continues to pat at the tuft of hair, her hand mist out in little puffs, and watching her own body disappear brings back the cold again.

——————

Violet jolts awake when there’s a loud thud and a groan, and her eyes fly around the room before they land on a body on the floor. Her body goes rigid and so, so cold, but then the body moves, rolling over with a loud moan, and she forces herself to relax. There’s a boy on the ground, rolling back and forth and making quite a racket. Violet figures he was bounding down the stairs and slipped on the last step. 

“Mom! Mother! I slipped on these fucking stupid ass carpeted stairs again! Fuck!” The boy yells from the ground, voice more whiny than angry, and his hands cup his rear as he whines. Eventually, he clambers up from the floor, and wrenches open a dresser drawer and begins digging around in it, and Violet surprises herself by feeling extremely irritated at the action. She isn’t sure why, it’s not like the drawers are neat to begin with, but she can’t feeling like she wishes she could force the boy out, protect the girl’s privacy for her. 

This is the most interested she’s been in any of the occupants of her home, and she’s annoyed with herself for starting to get attached. The girl will come and go just like all the others, and Violet will be here, and there’s nothing she could ever do to stop it. She watches the boy, who she assumes is a brother; despite not ever leaving this room Violet can hear that there are other occupants, loud occupants; pull something from the drawer she can't see and turn to go bounding up the steps. She smirks to herself as his socked feet slide on a step again, though he catches himself and continues away. 

——————

Violet blinks and suddenly the lights are on, and somehow she just knows it’s not been long. She hears voices drifting from upstairs, happy and bright, and she wonders if the girl is a part of that joy, how she’s been during Violet’s unawareness. She takes the moment to investigate the room, looking around at the pictures with curiosity and looking down with disgust as she floats over piles of dirty clothes. She ends up staring for a while at a collection of things on top of the girl’s dresser. There’s a lighter, a pack of Camels, which despite the different design she feels a thrill at recognizing the same brand she had smoked, and several balled up pairs of panty hose, which she sneers at. There’s also various kinds of trash, and a pile of homemade looking buttons. The one top has a little rainbow, and Violet wishes she move them around so she could see the rest. Violet startles as a loud voice and even louder steps stumble down the stairs, a woman’s voice filled with warning and chastisement following after it. Violet turns and sees the boy fall into the room, with sparkling eyes and a giddy grin. 

“I still love you, mi’jo, even if you are an idiot!” The woman’s voice is filled with fondness as it echoes down the stairs, and Violet finds herself also grinning. 

Violet's eyes run over the boy, who is in tiny shorts and a t-shirt with the same skull that’s on the wall, the sleeves torn away. He flops on the bed on his back, still giggling. Her eyes run over his face, with it’s plump lips and nice cheekbones, and her gaze darts back toward the poster her eyes always seem to fall on; of the woman in silver. Violet feels an intense thrill run through her, and she feels so, so stupid. 

This boy, and the girl she’d seen originally, they’re one and the same, they’re like her. She remembers the night she’d found them crying, and her hands go numb with the cold. She blinks and finds herself hovering over him, horizontally. Her eyes rake across his face, and arms, and legs, and she feels such relief when she finds them free of bruises; other than little ones on the knee and on a few on his shins. He looks healthy; he looks happy, and her body drops in the air closer to the ground, feeling much less manic. She turns upright and lands, almost, back on the floor, toes just brushing the carpet. She can’t shake the deep iciness in her hands, but manages to keep to there, not wanting to leave this moment. The boy rolls onto his side and wraps his arms around a pillow, eyes shut and mouth still grinning. Violet glances between him and the makeup on the vanity, and wonders how much the world could’ve possibly changed. Violet looks back at the content grin on his face, and drops her hand on his shoulder. The cold immediately shoots from her hands to envelop her whole body, but she finds herself smiling in spite of it. 

——————

The next time Violet comes to, it’s much slower than the other times. The room is dark, it’s nighttime, but she hears the boy quietly talking and looks around. The room flickers with soft light, coming from a few candles that are lit on the floor. The boy is sitting between them, and there’s something on the floor in front of him that Violet can’t quite make out. 

“I know you’re here. I-I don’t know if you can hear me, or if you want to talk to me. But I know you’re here…And I want you to know it’s, like, totally okay to talk to me. I already feel like I know you, a little. I dream about you, you know? Do you show me those memories on purpose? You know I wear makeup sometimes? And after I put it on I always dream about you doing yours. I’ve actually, um, picked up some pointers from watching.” The boy pauses his rambling to laugh nervously, and Violet finds herself standing in front of him before she can even blink. 

Her mind races so fast it sends her cold again, but she manages to hold it back and focus in on him again. He dreams about her? He knows what she looks like? He… knows she’s here? 

There’s a board on the floor in front of him, and it has letters on it. His fingers are resting on a little wooden triangle with a opening in the middle, and Violet realizes he’s trying to communicate with her. She takes a step forward and reaches out before jerking her hand back. She can’t move anything, she can’t even touch him. This is a hopeless situation. Her face suddenly starts to feel very cold, which she knows is odd because it normally starts in her limbs. Her eyes feel so cold that she raises a hand to touch them, the cold intensifying to that odd almost burn. Violet’s eyes raise from the boy, who’s tapping his fingers anxiously, to the mirror over the vanity behind him. There’s something odd about her reflection, and as her fingers press into her her own cheeks, she realizes she’s crying. The rest of her body goes cold, and she slips away.

-——————

Violet jerks into awareness, and she can’t help but feel that there’s something very, very wrong. The boy is crying again, sobbing, sitting up in bed with his knees to his chest. Violet feels a surge of panic and protectiveness rush over her. She kneels at head of his bed, wishing she could comfort him, and is startled when the light flips on. His mother rushes in the room, climbing onto his bed and wrapping him in a hug.

“Danny? Danny, baby, what’s wrong?” Her voice is frantic, and her hands pat over his arms and head nervously. She rocks the boy- Danny- back and forth gently, face pressed to the top of his head. Violet takes a moment to roll the name Danny around in her head, trying to apply it to the boy in her memories too, know that she knows his name. After a minute, he begins to calm a bit, and starts to explain himself through hiccups and a choked up throat.

“A girl died, Mom. She died, and she’s been dead a long time.” Danny gasps in shallow breathes, and Violet jolts upright, floating a bit, as she takes in his words.

“Where, baby? Did you read about it, or did you know her?” His mom’s hands rub over his hair, cradling him close, and her voice is soft, careful.

“Here, Mom, here. Right here, right there, on the floor, she was on the floor and there was blood everywhere, in my room! On my floor. I-I’ve seen her before mom, I told you, I dream about her all the time, about her sewing and cooking and putting on makeup. She died in here!” Danny’s voice raises and cracks, and he’s pointing to the floor with a shaking hand. Violet’s spine goes cold, and her vision shimmers a bit, but she refuses to look away, refuses to blink. She needs to hear this, has to hear this. His sadness, his pain; it’s her fault. 

“Oh, baby, oh honey, it’s okay. Do you wanna tell me what you saw?” Danny’s mother pulls back a bit to look him in the eye, wipes at the tears on his red cheeks. He coughs a bit and nods, biting down hard on his lip. 

“She was, came home, I think, and she was in a bathtub, and she was crying, crying like me now.” He pauses to laugh shakily, wiping his nose on his hand. “Her nail polish was chipped. And then- she had this dress, it was pink, but it was. It was dirty. And she started, like, ripping sequins off of it, and all these pretty stones, too. Like she hated it… and then, there was someone at the door, I think. She was smoking in the kitchen, and she heard someone at the door. I don’t know, it got, uh weird. I didn’t see who it was. But it was a man, I think, and he made her come down here; it was still just a basement. And he- I think he hit her, mom. I think he hit her a lot. There was a lot of blood. She was laying there, on the floor, and it was cold, the concrete was cold. He killed her, Mom.” 

Violet feels the cold overwhelm her again, and she stumbles back away from the bed where Danny has resumed crying in his mother’s arms. If she looks hard enough at the carpeted floor, she can almost remember the concrete floor, remember feeling it cool and hard under her cheek. She remembers the pain, the fear, and she remembers the cold. She turns her head away from the spot and glimpses herself in the mirror. Her lipstick is smeared across her cheek, and there’s black streaks down her cheeks from crying, and her hands and dress are soaked with blood. She stares at this reflection, and knows appearance is as she is now, and not as she remembers herself being. She calls forward the cold this time, overwhelmed and desperate. 

-——————

The next time Violet awakens, Danny’s hair is a bit longer, and blonde again. He’s laying on foundation, and wearing fishnets and heels with tiny shorts. Violet’s eyes linger on the pumps, and she shakes her head at the way his ankles are shaking in them. She wishes there was a way for her to help him adjust his posture, give him a few pointers- and suddenly she remembers. He knows. Violet strides forward and pauses next to him, taking in all the makeup spread out on the vanity. There has got to be a way to make contact, she just knows it. If she just tries hard enough, she’s sure she can figure out a way. 

She reaches forward and runs her fingers over a tube of lipstick. She watches her fingers dissipate around it, watches the mist fade away. Violet bites down on her bottom lip and focuses, imagines holding it in her hands, and concentrates on making her fingers solid again. She sighs when it doesn't seem to work, and lifts her eyes to look at her figure floating in the mirror next to him. Violet still looks the same, her eyebrows perfectly arched and lipstick rich and red. Violet realizes that Danny has applied the same color she’s wearing, a bit more shiny than Violet’s matte, but the exact same shade. Their lips are a similar shape too, though the boys are a bit rounder than Violet’s own, and her heart clenches; he really is mimicking her makeup. Her fingers reach out to trail over the lipstick tube again as the boy admires his own reflection, hands teasing with his hair. The moment her fingers touch the lipstick tube she feels different, somehow, less cold, and the boy’s mouth falls open with a startled yell. Violet jerks back as he whirls around, stumbling in his shoes, eyes flying around the room and breathing shaky. Violet feels equally shaken, eyes darting between the mirror and the boy, then down to her own hands. Did he see her in the mirror? 

“Hello? It’s you! I fucking knew you were real! Are you still here? Sorry if I like, scared you, I just like. Fuck!” Danny giggles, voice shaky and excited. His eyes glance around the room once more, and then he turns back to the mirror, peering into it. Violet hesitantly appears back as his side, trying to recreate the moment, but she feels tired, and the cold is already creeping back in. Thankfully, the boy seems satisfied, still smiling wide, and Violet feels almost happy as she fades away. 

-——————

Danny’s hair was grown out quite a bit, several inches of dark at the roots of his hair, and he’s shimmying into a pair of fishnet tights. He’s taken to babbling to himself recently, apparently embracing the fact that Violet is around and trying to include her as much as possible. Violet hasn’t actually been around in a while, the effort of showing herself had taken quite a toll, but she immediately feels warmed by the fact. 

“And Mom is worried, of course, but I told her; this is what I want to do, what I have to do. And I, fuck like, I dunno. I know this is what you’d want me to do too, be happy, be brave. So… I’m fucking doing it.” 

Danny slides his feet into his heels, and stands up, taking a few strides around the room. His walk is much better, much more confident, and Violet feels proud of how far he’s come. She isn’t sure what he’s talking about, exactly, but then he slides on a leather jacket, and she can’t but smile. He’s going out, in drag, and he’s doing it because he feels her support. She gets a wave of sudden and undeniable dread, more real feeling than any other emotion she’s shadowed in the last years, but figures it out to be fear left over from her death. She watches as he checks himself out in the mirror once more before turning to face the rest of the room, throwing his arms out.

“How do I look?” He grins wide, and Violet returns it even though he can’t see it. Danny turns and leaves the room, and Violet sinks into the cold lightly, wanting to be there when he returns, to inevitably hear about how his first night out goes.

-—

She hears Danny stumble into the house again, heels clacking loudly on the floor. She hovers over to glance inside the closet at the clothes there, listening to the loud noises of Danny stumbling and opening cabinets. She thinks he may have been drinking, but she can never really tell with him. She hears the click of a lighter and shakes her head; his mom will be furious is he’s smoking in the house. She feels like her house is her home again, almost, and she thinks that she could almost get used to the burning cold of being awake if it meant watching this boy grow into his own. 

She glances over at the stairs when she hears Danny’s heels at the top of the stairs. She can see the faint glow of a cigarette, and her eyes fall shut at the familiarity of the smell of smoke wafting down the stairs. 

“Aw, fuuuck!” 

Violet’s eyes snap open just in time to see Danny’s heels slide on the carpet of the stairs, and then he’s tumbling down them, yelping, and lands with crash on the hard floor. His cigarette rolls from his fingers, and Violet freezes over, staring hard at his crumpled form. She kneels down by his side, reaching a hand out to his shoulder, watching helplessly as it passes through his arm. Her arm flickers in and out of existence before her eyes as she desperately waits for him to laugh it off, to get up. But he isn’t. He isn’t doing anything. Violet leans in close and notices his back isn’t rising and falling with his breathing, and she feels the same burst of dread from earlier return.   
He can’t be- he can’t have-

“It’s you.” The cold intensifies when Violet hears his voice again, and turns burning when she peers down at his unmoving body, and realizes the voice came from behind her. She turns slowly around, terrified, and shudders when she sees Danny standing in front of his closet. He’s grinning wide, eyes running over Violet’s body and face quickly, taking her in. His eyes raise to look over her shoulder, and his grin only falters a little.

“It’s me.” He says this time, sounding less enthused. “Well, fuck!” His gaze lingers on his body, eyes focusing in on the small pool of blood forming under his head, then he wrenches his eyes away, blinking rapidly. Violet moves slowly away from Danny’s body, so that when Danny looks at her he can’t see it. Danny’s eyes snap back to Violet, and he grins again.

“Hey. Uh guess we haven’t officially met, so, uh. I’m Danny.” Violet smiles and opens her mouth to return the statement, but nothing happens. She raises a hand to her neck, focusing in on the memory of her own voice, and tries again.

“Violet.” Her name comes out as a whisper, echoing around the room quietly, but it comes out. Violet feels odd hearing her voice again, but it does sound how she remembers it, and it takes less effort than she was expecting to use it. Danny startles a bit, and Violet isn’t sure if it’s because of the odd echo or if her voice just sounds different than he was expecting. 

“Violet.” Danny repeats, grin growing impossibly wider. “I guess I’m dead, huh? Stuck with you forever?” 

Violet feels a thrill at the words, and can’t help but smile back. 

“I guess so… at least you died cute.” Violet drawls back, and it feels so good to speak again, to be able to talk to Danny. She has so much to say to him, she doesn’t even know where to start. Danny raises a hand to his own face, and laughs loudly.

“Is it always so cold?” His voice is quieter this time, and he’s pulled his hand away to stare at his own fingers. 

“Unfortunately. You get used to it, in a way.” She flexes her own fingers, and there’s several beats of silence. Violet’s worried that if she lets it go on too long, Danny will absorb the fact that’s he’s dead, that in a few hours his mother will find his body, and Violet isn’t ready to deal with that quite yet.

“I wanted to answer you, when you tried to talk to me, I just can’t move anything. And I didn’t mean to show you any memories, but I’m glad you saw them… well, some of them. And. I am proud of you.” Violet lets the words she’d been thinking burst forth from her lips, staring into Danny’s eyes and feeling self-conscious for the first time in a long time. But Danny beams, bouncing in place, and takes a few steps toward her.

“Can I, like, give you the biggest fucking hug?” His arms are already reaching out, and Violet smiles, but she shakes her head gently.

“We can try but I turn into mist touch anything, and I bet you do to.” She passes her hand through the bed she’s perched over, but stands and steps forward anyway. “It’s the thought that counts, though.”   
She reaches out and Danny’s arms engulf her, and leans forward to rest her head on his shoulder. And she’s suddenly warm; so very, very warm. The cold is shaken away so quickly she gasps, clenching her hand in Danny’s shirt. His shoulder is soft and firm under her head, and she can feel his arms squeeze tightly around her. This time, when she cries, her tears are hot streaking down her face. 

“…I’m, like, guessing this isn’t normal?” Danny’s voice is confused in her ear, and Violet lifts her head, but tightens her arms. 

“No, or maybe it is? I don’t know, I’ve never met a ghost before.” Danny laughs, loud and honking, and squeezes Violet tight again.

“I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.” Danny looks smug, and Violet snorts, rolling her eyes.

“First, I hated that movie. Second, I do believe we’ve been friends for a while now. Third, it better be, because I’m stuck with you now, dammit. Oh, and if it’s not, I was here first and I’m not leaving.”


End file.
